Even if I’m looking for something cheap for dinner, getting “Steak N Shake” or getting a gyro isn’t really getting dinner. It’s getting a sandwich. Not much above going to McDonald’s .
Dinner is sitting down with your friends for some conversation and $10-$15 is about as cheap as you can do it nowadays and still be getting dinner. I don’t think that’s having “refined tastes”. It’s just economic reality.
Sure, you can do greasy Chinese take-out for less than that, but any sit-down Chinese place is going to be $10+.
The “economic ditch” exists, but but I don’t think this qualifies.
These places do not serve “dinner”. These places serve “It’s 3:00am and I’m wasted and I’ll eat pretty much anything as long as you soak it in grease” food.
I’m not sure that it’s any more rude of them to expect you to spend $15 on dinner, than it’s rude of you to expect them to have dinner at Denny’s. I’m amazed that some compromise couldn’t be reached here, though. Someone couldn’t have sprung for your dinner? You couldn’t have had dinner at someone’s home? You couldn’t have spent the extra $10 and ate peanut butter for the rest of the week? (It sucks, but I’ve done it in my day.)
I’m not. I live in an extremely rural blue-collar working class town. A “good job” here pays $30K-$40K a year. Lots of people work for minimum wage or slightly above.
I just double checked a couple standard dinner places here in this town. The one we go to most often has dinner prices between $10 and $22. You can also get items like dinner salads, cold sandwiches, and burgers off their lunch menu - those are around $7-$8. So I’m not sure if that counts or not. By far most of their dinner menu is >$10.
Another place ranges from $10-$20, with “a la carte” items and appetizers coming in less than that.
There’s other places where you could grab dinner for less than $10/plate, but it really wouldn’t occur to me to go there for the type of dinner the OP implies unless someone specifically told me they wanted to spend less than $10. If I knew that, we could certainly find somplace. However, if they just told me they didn’t want to spend a lot, I would assume $10-$15 was fine.
Are you sure that’s the only kind of place they’ll eat? Based on your OP, I agree with AHunter3 in that they were probably oblivious rather than trying to ditch you. When you declined to go to dinner, did you explain the issue to them or did you just bow out?
When they come to town next, try something like “I’m a bit strapped on cash, but I know a great gyro place. Would that work for you?”
In other words, discuss it. If they’re really your friends, I can’t see them being all that upset over eating gyros instead of steak (or whatever).
I agree with this. $10-15 might be a lot for you, I won’t argue that. But I think most of us are finding it hard to believe that is budget buster. you [probably would have spent at least $8-10 in a more suitable place for your busget concerns. But this sounds like a special occasion to sit down with friends you see only every so often.
This is a great idea. Even the “overpriced chain restaurants” (OP’s wording, but I agree) are pretty reasonable at lunchtime. You can escape from Applebee’s/Chili’s/TGI Friday’s for around $10 at lunchtime, tip and all. Hell, you can go over to The Olive Garden, get unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks and a water for $5.95 + T&T.
I’m of two minds on this. I’ll join the chorus and say that $10-$15 for one person seems about average (including drink and tip, not just for the entree). Here in St. Louis you can eat in essentially any “normal” restaurant and find basic entrees for around $7. If the cheapest entree on the menu was $15, I’d consider that an expensive place. So I think refusing to attend a special dinner with your friends over a matter of $10 was out of line on your part.
On the other hand, what kind of friends are these that nobody would spot you a few bucks if your need was genuine? Could they have possibly thought you were putting on some kind of act, trying to fish for pity or something, and that’s why they weren’t willing to help? I honestly can’t imagine why one of your friends wouldn’t have just lent you $5 if it would have made the difference between you coming and not coming.
It’s not all that expensive in Arkansas, either. We eat out fairly often (about once a week), and for the two of us, I expect a check to be in the neighborhood of about $40 bucks, including the tip. That’s eating at a recognized chain restaurant, and getting what I would consider the cheaper entrées. We went out to a lovely little Italian ristorante in Hot Springs last week and the expenditure totaled $40 for lunch. I was excited we got away that cheaply for great food and fabulous atmosphere. Plus, we had enough left from the lunch to take back for a light dinner that night. In retrospect, we do that a lot with restaurant food. They always give you so much on a plate that we usually have enough left to take home for another light meal.
Perhaps next time you might justify spending a little more by telling yourself to take what you don’t eat back home to have for lunch the next day? That way it’s like paying for two meals instead of one.
I’m with davenportavenger on this one - I don’t think your friends were trying to be rude, as it probably didn’t occur to them that $10-$20 was expensive, but I also can understand why you’d be upset. I eat out maybe once a week, at a decent Chinese place, and they charge five bucks for a special. If it weren’t so cheap I wouldn’t eat out at all. Any other time I eat from home or snag something from the dollar menu at McDonalds or something. I make over $20,000 a year and I’m broke. It happens.
So while I agree that you could justifiably have been hurt over this, I wouldn’t hold too much of a grudge - sometimes it’s hard for people who CAN afford to fork out $10-$20 for dinner for one person (we do that once a year here, maybe) to remember what it was like when they couldn’t.
Having gone to Steak and Shake yesterday, I can tell you that $10 is about the lower limit on a platter, soda, tip, and taxes.
Just wait until you have a spouse and kids and can plop $25 down just by breathing the air!
The three of us went to bloody Olive Garden the other day and it was $50-damn-dollars!
OTOH, my total amount spent on booze, cigarettes, lottery, and other such vices is $0 for the decade. So a $50 lunch isn’t really taking it out on other “luxuries”.
How was the bill going to be split? It makes a big difference whether everyone was planning to pay for their own food/drink (especially the drinks since alcohol is comparatively expensive… I’m always the one drinking water and resenting subsidizing my friends’ drinks) or if they were planning to divide the check evenly. Many times you can find a cheaper entree on the menu even at the $10-15 restaurants and then not order an appitizer, drinks, or dessert and get out of there pretty cheaply. But if your friends were expecting you to pitch in to cover part of their meal if they ordered something more expensive, I can definitely see not going with them.
Also, were they local friends? If not and it was in your area, next time pick a place that meets your needs and suggest it. Many times if I’m in an unfamiliar place, I just go with whatever chain restaurant is suggested even though it may be more expensive than a local family-owned restaurant because I don’t know the scene. Maybe they just didn’t know what would be available (and not roach infested!).
I was wondering the same thing. I cannot think of any restaurant, except for fast food, where you could get dinner for less than ten dollars. Even a greasy spoon’s going to charge you $6.99 for the mystery meat special; throw in a soft drink, tax and a tip and there’s ten bucks. I’m not from California.
I eat at Eat’nPark a lot, and rarely do I have a check that’s under 10$. Pretty much all of the dinner items are 7-8$, and if you get a drink with it you’re adding on around 1.25$ depending on the beverage. Figure that you’re going to leave a tip of around 20% also, and you’re not gettin out of there for less than 10$.
You can, if you get one of the Breakfast Smiles or something, but not with the dinner entrees.
How little do you eat?
Seriously. I live in Pittsburgh (have for >20 years) and I’ve never, ever been able to ‘get full up on sushi’ for less than about 50$ per person.
I’m from Pittsburgh and I don’t think that 10-15$ for dinner is expensive at all. That’s a typical lunch at even Eat’nPark. Cheap lunch is done at Pizza Hut where the buffet is what, 5$?
Again, where?
Because in the >20 years I’ve lived here, I have no idea how you can ‘live comfortably’ in Pittsburgh on less than 20K a year. I left Shadyside five years ago because I thought that 550$/mo rent on a 490 sq ft studio in a hundred year old building without modern telephone lines and no air conditioning was too steep.
Shit even Fuel & Fuddle’s half price after 11 pm food is now barely going to make it in under the 10$ limit.
About the only place I know in Oakland where the eats were that cheap were the O (5$ for a large pizza) and um… that one really dirty chinese place on Atwood.
Most people just aren’t going to consider 15$ for dinner out to be expensive for one person. I don’t think that it was rudeness so much as a different perspective on ‘expensive’, although I woulda offered to pay for my friend.
Did you tell your friends that? Because if you did, then I could understand them thinking, “If she’ll pay that much for certain kinds of food, she must not be that broke.” Maybe they figured that going out together was a special occasion in thesame way that sushi is a special occasion.
When they told you where they were going, you could have said, “Oh, sorry, that’s out of my budget. Why don’t we meet for coffee on Sunday?” Coffee’s a great cheap way to hang out with friends. You can get the big ol’ slice of cake and fancy frothy drink or just a regular cup of joe, as your finances allow.
I actually live kinda close to Shadyside. Pay much less in rent, though. Really, it is not hard to thrive on 20k a year here, at least for me. I don’t have many luxuries but I am not like, dirt broke either. I guess it depends on your definition of comfortable (I have no problem eating TV dinners 2-3 times a week, I only eat once a day usually, and I don’t drive) is, but I don’t feel like I live THAT meager an existence.
For sushi I normally get eel rolls and California rolls at Oishii which is like 24 rolls for $12. Eat 'n Park has never been over $10 because I am a breakfast person–if a place serves breakfast I’ll always get that, not because I’m cheap but because I really like breakfast.
I should have gone to that dinner. I’ll go next time and get the least expensive thing and suck it up.
The thing that also bugs me about this… This was actually a special occasion for you and your friends. You said you hadn’t seen some of them in awhile. You couldn’t pony up a couple of extra bucks and maybe consumed a tv dinner 3 times instead of two that week?
If I was one of the friends in this situation I would have probably left you behind too. It sounds like cheapness for cheapness sake. If you are willing to let literally 3 or 4 dolllar keep you from spending a night out with friends you hadn’t seen in months, that’s your deal, no one elses.
that exchange wouldn’t have made me think about prices, but that apparently, you like Steak and Shake (what is “Steak and Shake”? Is it like Denny’s?) Even in the OP, it isn’t clear to me that they were told beforehand why you declined dinner.
Friends make allowances and compromise for each other when the needs are clear, especially in something as easily accomodated as restaurant choices - whether that means finding a place that doesn’t have a smoking section, has vegetarian entrees, has a certain dish, or has a price range that all of them can meet. I’ve walked out of restaurants after checking the menu and thinking “this just won’t work for Pat,” and others have done the same for me. But we can’t do that if we don’t know.
Well, I do talk online with them all the time. And my roommate also declined because of the expense and I didn’t want to ditch her. And also I can’t deal with last-minute decisions and maybe if I would have had a few hours to think it over I would have decided differently. But thanks for kicking me while I’m down, apt username.
Gotta be counted with the “$15 ain’t expensive” crowd. If you’re broke, then tell them you are going macrobiotic or something and just have a salad. But if you can’t spring for something at a place in that range, you really shouldn’t be eating out at all.
